Tell me about a time you had to manage a stock-out risk for a critical food or consumable item. How did you coordinate between operations, suppliers, and stores to avoid disruption to service?

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VirtualInterview.AI · Accepted Answer

At my previous company, we had a real stock-out risk on cooking oil across 18 sites when our main supplier had a production issue. We had about four days of stock on hand, and average daily usage was roughly 1.2 days of stock per site, so we needed a quick, coordinated response.

I started by getting an updated on-hand and in-transit report from each store, then prioritized higher-volume locations. I worked with operations to agree on temporary menu tweaks and portion controls to cut usage by about 15%.

In parallel, I contacted three approved backup suppliers, pre-negotiated by procurement, and split the volumes so no single supplier was overloaded. I arranged direct-to-store deliveries for the busiest eight sites and cross-shipped from lower-volume stores to balance stock.

We got the first emergency deliveries within 48 hours and completely avoided service disruption or menu cuts, despite a two-week delay from our primary supplier.

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